Practice Financial Trends

Business Of Dentistry Podcast

Today we revisit some alternative programs for call tracking and analytics as well as look at some key metrics in determining trends in your practice. I also give an update on a little experiment I have been doing with our google reviews on episode 49 of the Business of Dentistry. More About This Show If you've listened to this show before you know I recommend financial tracking in your business; I do it in my practice. Today I took a look at our numbers, as I regularly do. Specifically, I viewed our production, collections and adjustments for the year. I then compared those numbers to last year's numbers, as well as last year's quarter to this year's quarter. I check to see if we are declining, if we are flat or if we are growing. I do this year over year, month over month, just to get an idea if we are doing as well as we have in the past, or if we are doing worse or doing better. So today when I checked the numbers, I factored in how much vacation time I took as well and I was happy to see we are still a little ahead of 2015 at this point in the year. I'm hoping that indicates I'm working smarter, not harder and that we're being more productive and collecting more money in less time. The Importance of Online Reviews Another thing to look at in your practice is your social media reviews. Yes this may sound like I'm beating a dead horse if you have listened to the show before, but let me explain why it's so important! Recently my office manager and I were looking at trends in self-referred patients. I have a traditional oral surgery practice, and as such a lot of my patients are referred from other practices, especially from our partner practices in the community. If someone isn't from another dentist, from their insurance, or from one of our existing patients, then they are self-referred. We track this number by asking people when they come in how they heard of us and we have noticed an increase in self-referred patients. We are finding many of these new patients are also commenting on how many Google reviews we have. While we haven't yet directly linked these two things, I'm seeing a lot of solid data to show how important reviews are to increasing your self-referred patients and to growing your overall practice. So it's important to revisit that part of your practice if you haven't done so recently. How many reviews do you have? How many versus others in your area? You want to be in the game at least, don't be the only person in town who isn't doing this! Hear more about the importance of online reviews and about financial trends on episode 49 of Business of Dentistry, then leave a comment below or send me an email with your thoughts! Tweetable: "Check the pulse of your practice and see where you are at." Episode Resources All Star Dental Academy Call Tracking Metrics Voices of Dentistry Business of Dentistry on Facebook Connect with me on Twitter